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The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

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Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#331

Post by zuminator »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

I’m a longtime Windows fan, and initially I was quite enamored by Edge as well. Base UX is excellent, lots of settings and they’re easy to find. Vertical tab bar, profiles, and it all Just Works. I flat out love its “turn this website into a desktop app” feature. But by now they've shoved their core consumer products so chock full of crap that even I am starting to look for a way out. I got my son a new laptop recent…

You can easily turn off widgets from Taskbar settings: Personalization -> Taskbar -> Widgets (Off)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#333

Post by soundnote »

shp0ngle wrote: post #305
soundnote wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave has vertical tabs built in, designed to work much in the same way as Edge's (you'll need to enable a flag. Then right click a tab)

Oh I will try it then. I disliked how Brave includes all the crypto nonsense when I tried it last. Yes you can turn it off, but you can say that about Edge too.

'Bout that...

https://twitter.com/thebookisclosed/status/16367594878299176...

(Also, use the Brave Beta. It seems that some key fixes haven't gotten to Stable yet)

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#334

Post by ncpa-cpl »

charcircuit wrote: post #284
whoisthemachine wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just recently, my partner's PC had to be wiped because BitLocker was surprise enabled by Windows 11, and I hadn't set her PC up with an online Microsoft login, so we couldn't get the BitLocker key that we never knew we needed. So your data is now hostage to Microsoft, and if you didn't read the full manual when setting up your partner's new Windows PC, you now lost her data. Writing about it, it feels like ransomware…

Doesn't windows make you sign in to an account during the install?

It’s possible to skip this by not connecting to the internet until the installation is over

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#336

Post by Karunamon »

sph wrote: post #312
pseudalopex wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim was not extraordinary. Many calculator apps have currency conversion.

Fetching currency data is not phoning home. And how is currency conversion supposed to work without contacting an external service? Let's not dilute the original meaning. Phoning home means sending telemetry and other usage data to its creator and associated third parties, and this data exchange is not at all necessary for the program to do its job.

Communicating with the Internet without express prior consent, with as much emphasis as I can convey in the limited formatting options provided by this site, ABSOLUTELY IS PHONING HOME. Any other assumption is unsafe and a privacy hole large enough to deliver freight.

If the calculator wants to pull exchange rate information, all it needs to do is ask. Anything else should be presumed as shady in the current environment.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#338

Post by WalterBright »

Qem wrote: post #146
300bps wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently switched from Edge to Firefox Right there with you. Somewhere in my comment history here six years ago was my suggestion for Microsoft to give up on Internet Explorer and create their own fork of Chromium. They could’ve gotten massive adoption if they did it right. Instead I had to turn off their useless auto-coupon feature, be ever vigilant to keep them from switching my search provider to Bing, frequentl…

> Switched to Firefox and planning to dual-boot Windows 11 and Ubuntu soon. It doesn't help Microsoft apparently also managed to make dual boot more difficulty. Some years ago it was quite seamless, you could rely on automatic partition and it just worked. Today windows messes with the Linux bootloader after install, and to make it work I have to resort to advanced partition mode.

I gave up on dual boot long ago. I just bought another box and networked it to the main one.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#339

Post by e4e5 »

mdasen wrote: post #129

> Partly I’m hoping that somebody at Microsoft will wake up to the unrealised potential of Edge and start treating it like Safari: a utility that end users can trust to have their back and preserve their privacy in as many circumstances as possible. Apple doesn’t try to make revenue from Safari because they don’t need to. I understand what the author is getting at, but Apple does make a lot of money off Safari. Their…

The only reason apple is making money with safari is because they keep it a browser people trust.

If people wouldn't trust safari, and treat it like edge: uninstalling it, moving to other browsers, etc.. it wouldn't be worth it for google to pay apple.

Re: The dark defaults of Microsoft Edge

#340

Post by Qem »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #303
pxc wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows doesn't support multiple EFI System Partitions on one system¹, and it will nuke the default EFI boot image (bootx64.efi) on the ESP it uses whenever it updates or does startup repair. So if you do this make sure you have configured the Linux system to write EFI variables and know that if you ever clear them, you may lose the ability to boot Linux until you perform a repair. Dual booting sucks. Don't do it, es…

It's always seemed to me that dual-booting sucks because Microsoft ensure it sucks. Basically every one who wants to have a Linux distro and Windows on the same box has to work around MS being a dick. Their hope is that you give up and stick with Windows, presumably. It just makes me more keen not to use Windows.

> It's always seemed to me that dual-booting sucks because Microsoft ensure it sucks.

Up to W7 it was quite well behaved. Afterwards, it was like Microsoft ensured there was debris clogging the emergency exits before setting the whole building on fire, to make hard for people to escape. Now W11 is full of dark patterns and tracking, and dual-boot is broken. Beginners lost a easy way to get their feet wet on Linux without upfront commitment to a full switch.

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